Conferencing

Here are some interesting stories worth reading. Incidentally, I now have a Plantronics CS70N installed at my desk. It is about the same size and weight as the popular Plantronics Voyager 510 with the difference being slightly more weight and thickness as well as a long voice tube which reaches your mouth.
I have been able to walk a few hundred feet (with massive amounts of RF emitting equipment in-between) from my base station before sound quality degrades.
Enjoy:

Research in Motion has taken the full unified communications plunge via its Blackberry Mobile Voice System (MVS) solution. The goal of this product is to allow a Blackberry smartphone to become a seamless telephony extension.
Millions of users already rely on Blackberrys to provide them seamless e-mail and now the company is pushing hard into the world of voice. MVS provides enhancements to device software, the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) and Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite from Ascendent Systems which is a subsidiary of RIM.
I had a chance to catch up with Ascendent Systems Senior Marketing Manager Heather Howland a few weeks back in Boston to discuss this announcement. In addition we spoke today where she rounded out the details.

I have just received word Kerry Garrison will be speaking at TMC’s Communications Developer Conference to take place next month in Santa Clara, CA. Kerry is the Sr. Product Manager at Trixbox and works intricately with the open-source development community. If you have any interest in open-source communications development you will not want to miss his presentation.
In addition, Kevin Fleming, the co-maintainer of Asterisk will be presenting a keynote at the event.
We believe our keynote program is well balanced with representation from the open-source community and other important players in the market who will give their perspectives from various vantage points.
Keynotes will be provided from these other companies (in chronological order):

Tomorrow I will be speaking in sunny Phoenix, Arizona on “Marketing in the New World Order”. I often write about a plethora of new technologies and tomorrow I get a chance to weave together my knowledge of marketing and technology together and in doing so I hope to shed light on opportunities many companies are not yet taking advantage of.
Building communities, blogging and sites like Twitter will be mentioned as well as Web 2.0 and mashups. I am really looking forward to talking about this subject matter as it is an area I have a tremendous amount of passion for.
I am speaking for a company called Teledirect and the event is open to Teledirect sponsors and customers. If you fit one of these categories I hope to see you there.
Here is a link for more details.

I was just perusing an article on Skype development from Greg Galitzine which consists of an interview with head of development for the world’s most successful VoIP software company. The interview is with Paul Amery the Director of the Skype Developer Program.
Here are some of the salient comments from Paul:
The breadth of developers who work with Skype is extraordinary. They range from 15-year old techies who are coding in their bedrooms to CEOs with more than 30 years of experience developing software applications. The uniting factor is that they all love Skype, and constantly want us to enhance the platform to help them do more.
The most popular application [Skype Extra] overall is CrazyTalk for Skype from Reallusion.

Congratulations to Ed Whitacre Jr. for building a great big telecommunications company from an assortment of smaller ones. Certainly in this case the sum was greater than the parts.
Ed is about to retire and he can consider this my retirement present.
While I have perhaps had a rant or two over the years about net neutrality comments made by Mr. Whitacre, there is not a single person who can deny this man has achieved greatness in the world of communications and technology.
Ed Whitacre Jr. put AT&T back together again and left it in great shape.
The Board of Directors has chosen Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T's chief operating officer, to succeed Whitacre as chairman and CEO.
Randall has tremendous shoes to fill and it may be very tough to keep AT&T’s massive momentum going without even more acquisitions. These could consist of content plays such as perhaps satellite radio, internet companies and even advertising networks. Yahoo!

In a $723 Million transaction two of the leaders in the mid-market communications space have teamed up as Mitel has just acquired Inter-Tel. Both companies were very strong players in the mid-size PBX space and both were leaders in staying ahead of the technology curve
Going back to the days of CTI over a decade ago, Mitel and Inter-Tel are established players in IP communications and unified communications.
“We believe this is an outstanding transaction for our stakeholders,” said Inter-Tel CEO Norman Stout. “Mitel and Inter-Tel have state-of-the-art products and complementary channels to market. In particular, we are excited about the opportunities this partnership represents for Inter-Tel’s associates and partners, who we believe will benefit from being part of a larger, growing and dynamic organization that can compete more effectively in the marketplace. We look forward to working with the Mitel team to ensure a rapid and seamless transition.”

The combined company, including Inter-Tel international subsidiaries such as Inter-Tel Europe, Swan Solutions and Lake Communications, will have solutions to address the needs of very small to large businesses globally.

Blackberry users are having a banner day as fist they are able to run their programs on Windows Mobile computers and now Iotum and JaJah are collaborating to allow the power of Jajah’s calling network to be combined with Iotum’s Talk-Now application.
"We saw a clear opportunity to enhance the experience for mobile users by partnering with JAJAH," said Iotum CEO Alec Saunders. "Initially, our collaboration means that Iotum Talk-Now users will have one-click access to JAJAH for all their contacts. In the future, Iotum will release other 'New Presence'-enabled applications in conjunction with JAJAH, such as PIN-less, mobile conferencing."
What are the benefits? Blackberry users now can have access to all the presence applications Iotum offers and at the same time collaborate seamlessly with their Jajah contacts.

Today is a momentous occasion for me as TMCnet has gone international developing continent-specific editions for Latin America, Europe, Asia the Middle East and Australia. You will find these country choices on a grey horizontal bar at the top of most of our pages. TMCnet is the largest communications and technology portal in the world and this move allows people everywhere to see news specific to their needs.

We believe this move is a good one for TMCnet visitors and the advertisers looking to cost-effectively target communications buyers – service providers, enterprise decision makers, resellers and developers worldwide
TMCnet has approximately 2 million unique visitors per month and here are Alexa’s statistics on TMCnet’s international reach as of this writing:
Tmcnet.com users come from these countries:
United States 54.6%
Canada 5.0%
United Kingdom 4.8%
India 4.2%
Australia 1.9%
Malaysia 1.5%
Germany 1.4%
Philippines 1.2%
Singapore 1.1%
Israel 1.1%
China 1.0%